China Names Moon Features

I guess having 1/5 of the world's population means that you can do
whatever you want. China has announced that they are renaming
hundreds of lunar features in Chinese. I guess that the International
Astronomical Union doesn't matter anymore.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english201...c_13475521.htm

I don't think they will change them, just translate them into Chinese;
which could be pretty strange in it's own right, as I'd like to see what
exactly the ideograms they come up with translate literally back into in
English.

The article said - to avoid confusion and to standardize terminology -
sounds more like renaming than just translating. But then again they're
going there to stay while the NASA guys will be busy writing Kilroy Was Here
on a small hunk of rock, taking pictures of a mathematical point in space
and still trying to find something useful to do with the ISS.


Val Kraut

On 9/2/2010 12:08 PM, Vincent D DeSimone wrote:
I guess having 1/5 of the world's population means that you can do
whatever you want. China has announced that they are renaming
hundreds of lunar features in Chinese. I guess that the International
Astronomical Union doesn't matter anymore.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english201...c_13475521.htm

I don't think they will change them, just translate them into Chinese;
which could be pretty strange in it's own right, as I'd like to see what
exactly the ideograms they come up with translate literally back into in
English.

Pat

On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 17:23:18 -0400, "Val Kraut"
wrote:

But then again they're
going there to stay while the NASA guys will be busy writing Kilroy Was Here
on a small hunk of rock, taking pictures of a mathematical point in space
and still trying to find something useful to do with the ISS.

Yeah, right. Big talk about a country that's launched three manned
flights in the time it took the US to complete Projects Mercury and
Gemini and by the time the fourth flies, we can add most of Apollo up
to 11.

Brian

On Sep 2, 5:44*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

I don't think they will change them, just translate them into Chinese;
which could be pretty strange in it's own right, as I'd like to see what
exactly the ideograms they come up with translate literally back into in
English.

The way I'm taking the article is that they will establish
standardized Chinese translations for the IAU names, so that there
will no longer be confusion because different authors use different
Chinese names as a result of translating the IAU names differently.

After all, Chinese is written with characters, so more has to be done
than a simple transliteration in order to express those names in a
manner readable to Chinese people.

John Savard

" Yeah, right. Big talk about a country that's launched three manned
flights in the time it took the US to complete Projects Mercury and
Gemini and by the time the fourth flies, we can add most of Apollo up
to 11.

Once upon a time we did Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - Now we're doing
nothing except trying to shut down the remnants of Constellation - which
Obama seems not capable of doing - and talking about dumb meaningless
missions that go nowhere.

One of my friends gave a paper in China this spring at a lunar exploration
conference - make no mistake the Chinese are on their way while we sit back
and discuss asteroid flybys and visiting something like a L1 point. Obama's
big contribution is hosting some muslim nation kids at NASA training.
Contrast this with von Braun aiming at the stars and achieving major
breakthroughs -Our goal now is to join the third world. The NASA
administrator goes to the mid east and announces his main goal is to involve
muslim nations in NASA activities. This is too weird for Saturday Night
Live. What's going on with Obama and NASA is like an early episode of the
Prisioner. NASA has become an exercise in Political Science and Political
agendas gone amoke.

On 9/2/2010 3:44 PM, Pat Flannery wrote:

I don't think they will change them, just translate them into Chinese;
which could be pretty strange in it's own right, as I'd like to see what
exactly the ideograms they come up with translate literally back into in
English.

Mare Desiderii?
"Place Of Wet Dreams"? ;-)

Pat

On Sep 2, 3:08*pm, Vincent D DeSimone wrote:

I guess having 1/5 of the world's population means that you can do
whatever you want. *China has announced that they are renaming
hundreds of lunar features in Chinese. *I guess that the International
Astronomical Union doesn't matter anymore.

There's probably less to this than meets the eye. Russian already uses
translations of the mostly Latin names for lunar features that we're
familiar with. Nobody at the IAU seems to think that's worth getting
indignant over.

On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 23:48:15 -0400, "Val Kraut"
wrote:

One of my friends gave a paper in China this spring at a lunar exploration
conference - make no mistake the Chinese are on their way

I agree that they are, but my point is that they are moving at a
snail's pace. The moon? Remember, China is still bragging about its
upcoming "Space Station" made out of overgrown Soyuz orbital modules.
They're going to do that and go to the moon with their existing
systems, which so far has demonstrated one flight every three years?

So, again, yeah sure China's gonna be on the moon in 2020. If you
believe that, I have some nice ready-for-development property west of
Miami to sell you.

Brian

In sci.space.policy message
, Thu, 2 Sep 2010 19:26:26, Brian Thorn
posted:
On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 17:23:18 -0400, "Val Kraut"
wrote:

But then again they're
going there to stay while the NASA guys will be busy writing Kilroy Was Here
on a small hunk of rock, taking pictures of a mathematical point in space
and still trying to find something useful to do with the ISS.

Yeah, right. Big talk about a country that's launched three manned
flights in the time it took the US to complete Projects Mercury and
Gemini and by the time the fourth flies, we can add most of Apollo up
to 11.

NASA has two or three manned flights planned for the next twelve months,
on vehicles developed by their parents' generation. After that, how
long will it be before they do their next three?

Remember - during Mercury Gemini & Apollo, the USA felt a need to
compete with the Soviets. The Chinese apparently feel no similar need;
they just want to keep ahead of the Indians and Japanese.

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